9 Art Events to Attend in New York City This Week

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19

Opening: Nina Canell at the Artist’s Institute
When Nina Canell first came across a Neolithic piece of chewing gum in a museum in Finland, she knew she wanted to make an artwork based on it. Fascinated by the gum’s elasticity and its ability to survive seven millennia, Canell created an installation that will debut at this show, the Berlin-based artist’s first solo exhibition in New York. For the piece, Canell combined gum with nitinol, a metal alloy of titanium and nickel that is very sensitive to temperature changes. The sculptures on view will continue changing over the course of the exhibition’s run, and will be accompanied by a video Canell made with Robin Watkins about slugs.
The Artist’s Institute, 132 West 65th Street, 6–8 p.m.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21

Opening: Susan Cianciolo at Bridget Donahue
Over the past few years, the multi-hyphenate artist and fashion designer Susan Cianciolo has had a long-lasting moment, appearing in both MoMA PS1’s “Greater New York” quinquennial in 2015 and this year’s Whitney Biennial, where she helmed a restaurant concept with roots in a 2001 project held at the Lower East Side gallery Alleged. “RUN PRAYER, RUN CAFÉ, RUN LIBRARY,” her second show at Bridget Donahue gallery, syncs up with another exhibition, at Modern Art gallery in London. Three large-scale structures will correspond to the show’s title’s objects—a café that will serve tea, a library with handmade books, and a prayer room. For the artist, the rooms are ways of questioning the relationship between spaces and the beings within them.
Bridget Donahue, 99 Bowery, 6–8 p.m.

Opening: NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1
One of the fall’s most notable art-world events in New York is Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair, which takes place every September at MoMA PS1. The event will feature all the zines you can shake a stick at, as well as art books and ephemera. As usual, there will be a robust weekend-long program of events, including a Saturday afternoon selection of performances curated by the internet radio station Know-Wave. The fair’s preview on Thursday night costs $10; otherwise, from Friday through Sunday, admission is free.
MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Queens, 6–9 p.m. Tickets $10

Performance: Stanley Love Performance Group at the Kitchen
The world right now may not be particularly upbeat, but the Stanley Love Performance Group hasn’t changed its tune. For the past two decades, the dance group has been performing positive-minded choreographies that celebrate diversity. Their works often ponder the relationships between individuals and groups, with dancers running and sashaying around wearing bright outfits. At the Kitchen this week, the group will debut Brings Swings, Sings Chimes Rings…, a new work full of “Existing Sharing Human Joy with Inspirational Hopes,” according to a description on the Kitchen’s website. Repeat performances will follow on Friday and Saturday.
The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, 8 p.m. Tickets $15/$20

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22

Opening: Stefan Tcherepnin at Real Fine Arts
Stefan Tcherepnin’s last show at Real Fine Arts, in 2014, included large stuffed monster-like sculptures that were originally made for use in an abstract film and towered over viewers there to commune with them. For his new show at the Brooklyn gallery, which recently relocated from Greenpoint to Prospect Heights, Tcherepnin will once again show work that quite literally goes over everyone’s heads: five new chandelier-like sculptures hanging from on high, with videos projected on the walls around them. Also on view will be birds sculpted from fabric.
Real Fine Arts, 184 Sterling Place, Brooklyn, 6–8 p.m.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23

Talk: Deborah Jiang-Stein and Gloria Steinem at Brooklyn Museum
As part of the Sackler Center’s ongoing series of talks about illegal incarceration, Deborah Jiang-Stein will discuss her memoir Prison Baby. Published in 2014, the book follows Jiang-Stein as she discovers the truth about her upbringing—which included being born in a prison to a heroin-addict mother. She’ll talk with the pioneering feminist Gloria Steinem about substance abuse and the incarceration of women, and how keeping these women in jail can affect their communities. A limited number of tickets will be available at the museum’s admissions desk starting at 11 a.m.
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, 2–4 p.m. Free admission

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 24

Opening: “Louise Bourgeois: An Unfolding Portrait” at Museum of Modern Art
Most people think of large-scale sculptures when they think of Louise Bourgeois, and now the Museum of Modern Art aims to shed new light on an under-seen part of her practice: her prints. In the midst of an ongoing catalogue raisonné project to comprise 5,000 works, MoMA will now feature a selection of 220 of them in its second-floor atrium and in its third-floor exhibition spaces. They’ll attest to the way that the French artist was able to translate her concerns with bodily innards and psychologies from three dimensions to two.
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, 10:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.

Opening: Rirkrit Tiravanija at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise
Fresh off a summer in the Catskills working on their collaborative restaurant Unclebrother, which rests in a former car dealership in Hancock, New York, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Gavin Brown team up once again, this time for a two-part show at the dealer’s Harlem and Lower East Side spaces. There’s no word yet on whether Tiravanija’s famous curry will be involved, but an announcement of the new show features an image of the poet Karl Holmqvist. The show’s title is a long one: “Skip the Bruising of Eskimos to the Exquisite Words vs. If I Give You a Penny You Can Give Me a Pair of Scissors.”
Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, 291 Grand Street and 439 West 127th Street, 12–4 p.m.

Talk: “Mário Pedrosa: On the Affective Nature of Form” at Whitney Museum
If you can’t make it to the Mário Pedrosa show at the Reina Sofía in Madrid, you can at least attend this event, which focuses on the Brazilian poet’s life and work. Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, one of the curators of the Reina Sofía show, will talk with Whitney Museum curators Elisabeth Sussman and Donna De Salvo about Pedrosa and his connections to Hélio Oiticica, currently the subject of a Whitney retrospective.
Whitney Museum, 99 Gansevoort Street, 3 p.m. Tickets $8/$10